[size=18pt]Senators, ministers hijack 524 jobs in FIRS[/size]

By Fidelis Soriwei, Abuja

Saturday, 28 Aug 2010
 

In an apparent subversion of the recruitment process into the Federal Inland Revenue Service, senators, ministers, members of the House of Representatives and others described as stakeholders submitted 524 names out of the 1,934 employed by the service since last year.

Reputed for her high principles, the chairman of the agency, Mrs. Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru, was said to have initially resisted the imposition of that huge number of job seekers on her, only to succumb later to the weight of persistent pressure from the top public office holders.

Consequently, the candidates of the public office holders got the jobs in one of the nation’s highest paying parastatals without fulfilling such formalities as entry tests or interviews.

A schedule indicating how the positions were to be shared described the 524 applicants as belonging to the ”stakeholders list.”

The FIRS boss, who secured autonomy for the agency a few years ago, following the National Assembly‘s passage of relevant bills, had always insisted that only the best hands would be employed in order to reform the service and raise its profile in terms of revenue collection.

A document our correspondent obtained gave the breakdown of external recruitment into the service as follows: Contract Staff, 45; those omitted from functional test, 5; Pool Staff, 19; and stakeholders list, 524.

”Internal recruitment,” which fell under the first batch, reserved 550 vacancies for ‘ automatic employment‘ while only 98 positions were advertised.

It was learnt that those on the ‘stakeholders list‘ bombarded the FIRS boss, a holder of First Class degree in Accounting from the University of Lagos, with applicants’ names because of the service’s newly improved remuneration package.

Besides, there is growing disenchantment among members of staff over the way the last promotion exercise was conducted in the FIRS.

Some of the workers complained that they were not being promoted as and when due.

The aggrieved employees also claimed that the executive chairman and her team did not implement the stipulated three-year mandatory promotion exercise for officers on Grade Level 7 to 14, which they said contradicted civil service rules. They also complained that the way the promotion examination was marked excited suspicion that some candidates from high places might have been favoured with high marks.

They alleged that the last promotion exercise was marked and reviewed by three committees, thus creating the impression that the final report might have been manipulated.

While a source in the FIRS said the three committees had to sit on the results in order to set new standards, the workers alleged that some people had their marks ”padded because they have access to the management” during the long period of delay in the exercise.

Documentary evidence shows that at the end of the exercise, the FIRS promoted 40 members of staff from Assistant Inspector of Taxes on Grade Level 13 to Chief Inspector of Taxes on Grade Level 14, in spite of declaring 92 actual vacancies and 43 consequential vacancies.

Some senior members of staff who participated in the examination alleged that while they were being denied promotion in spite of their qualifications and the number of years they had spent on a particular level, and passing the promotion examination, the FIRS management was more disposed to giving out such positions to ‘outsiders‘ some of whom came from ”some stakeholders.”

When our correspondent contacted the Head of Corporate Communications of the FIRS, Mr. Valentine Akeredolu, in his office on Thursday, he said that the claim that 524 people were given preferential treatment was untrue and irresponsible, because the FIRS chairman was known to be a stickler for competence.

Akeredolu demanded to be given at least a week to react to the inquiries of our correspondent, insisting that the FIRS would need facts and figures to defend the allegations. He , however, dismissed the claim that some people were deliberately kept in particular positions to pave the way for more vacancies to place newly employed members above them.

He said that when the advertisements were placed in newspapers, some of the members of staff who doubted the exercise refused to partake in it, while those who did and were found to have performed very well in addition to their paper qualifications were promoted.


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